Week Ten! We can see the home stretch from here, but as Matthew Weiner's bored, dissatisfied thoroughbreds gallop joylessly towards the finish line, they still have some time to stop along the way and couple with a filly to ease the existential angst of realizing that all they do with their lives is run in circles as fast as they can and never actually get anywhere. After the jump, your Mad Men Power Rankings:
1. Don Draper (even) Last week: 1
Don's world, so recently made topsy-turvey by a hippie grifter's blow and some friendly, intraoffice blackmail, seems to be stabilizing, for better or worse. The nastiness surrounding the Sterling Cooper contract he signed only when Bertram threatened to make our elusive anti-hero wear a "HI! NY NAME IS: DICK WHITMAN" badge to work each day was concluded when Lane Pryce tried to elicit a rare Draper smile by handing him a $5,000 bonus check. (Value in 2009 dollars: $4.3 million.) He once again has a mistress on retainer, curbing his appetite for uniformed service employees. He spent an entire episode unmolested by the insane whims of father-figure/billionaire nutbag Connie Hilton, who presumably was too busy sketching brownprints for his luxury lunar outpost with his own feces to send his adoptive "son" to the Bangkok Hilton to do QA work on its four-star ladyboy show. Lastly, Don was the shiny centerpiece of Sterling Cooper's 40th-anniversary-party-cum-agency-showcase, and on the receiving end of a gushing, insincere speech by bemused frenemy Roger Sterling. Things are good. (Ish.)
Stability, of course, is a fleeting thing. Especially when one's too-curious wife has stumbled upon a comically oversized pair of shears with which to snip the rope suspending the Shoebox of Damocles dangling over one's head and dump its contents all over one's temporarily semi-satisfying life. But that mess won't be dealt with until next week.
Don Draper Fingerbang Threat Level: Very low.
The Metro North to Grand Central is Don's sanctuary, a place where he can escape the cries of his rotten children, read the Times, and forget about his life of quiet, teacher-diddling desperation for 45 peaceful minutes. But Miss Farrell (he calls her that, because it's naughtynaughty to indulge in a bit of grade-school role-play) ignored their agreement not to be seen with him outside the normal parent/teacher context, and accosted him on his morning train. Don, visibly annoyed by this unwelcome intrusion, allowed her to take a seat next to him, but readied his fingers for an emergency insertion. Is this the moment when the whole thing goes sour, and she starts with the hang-ups, the drive-bys, the embittered love-notes scribbled on the back of Sally's geography homework? His hand, ready for upskirt deployment to preempt any threat to his family the moment she showed a sign of making the turn toward stalker, crept toward the space between their seats. But then: Farrell's own hand clamped down on his, she intertwined her delicate digits with his bruising, panty-shredding ones, and all threat of a mistress-taming fingerbanging dissipated. These were just two lovers, stealing a moment together out in the open, among all the other soul-dead breadwinners daydreaming about nailing their kid's hot teacher.
2. Betty Draper (even) Last week: 2
"Dearest Henry,
I'm terribly sorry about the awkwardness of my earlier phone call. I don't use the phone much anymore, and I apologize after the fact for being unable to to accurately express my thoughts about the possibility -- oh, the delicious, dizzying possibility! -- that you may have called my home and hung up when you heard my daughter's voice. Let me ask you something: did you clear your office upon hearing I was on the line, and then smile smugly, knowing it was only a matter of time before I came crawling back to you to finally consummate our affair? I bet you did. I know that you told me you don't want to play games with phone calls. So I'm writing you again, in the tradition of so many of literature's finest forbidden romances, to tell you about the awful thing that just happened. You see, I was just minding my business, rifling through my husband's pockets, when some keys fell out. Instantly, I knew they'd unlock the drawer on Don's desk that I've been unsuccessfully trying to pry open with various kitchen utensils for years. And, voila, it opens. There was some money, but whatever, who doesn't keep several thousand dollars in cash locked up in a desk drawer these days? But there was also a shoebox, and everyone knows that a shoebox kept under lock and key contains a man's terrible, terrible secrets. Inside this shoebox were some photos with some names written on them -- not Don's name! -- a deed to some property I don't know about, some Army junk, and, most chillingly a divorce certificate. With Don's name on it, as well as the name of some whore to whom he was apparently married during his mysterious past. Oh, Henry, I was so stunned and hurt and confused I had Carla take the kids away so that I could get properly liquored up while staring at the shoebox and waiting for a confrontation when Don came home. Which he never did, because of that crazypants Connie Hilton! I'm starting to suspect that Don is sleeping with him! And then Don expects me to go to a party an be his arm-candy? The nerve!
In any case, this is just my long-winded way of saying hold on a little longer. I think I'm going to let you have your way with me, eventually, pending the outcome of our fight over the shoebox.
Yours,
B."
3. Roger Sterling (even) Last week: 3
You know what really chaps Roger's ass? Having to chap Don's ass in front of a ballroom full of rich people, all of whom think he's some kind of genius for farting out bullshit about potato chips or crash-prone airplanes or diet soda. His firm was built on the expert knob-polishing talents of accounts men, not on the copy of guys he found working at a fur company while they finished night school. Still, nobody gives a better speech he doesn't believe than Roger Sterling. It's what good accounts people do.
4. Peggy Olson (up) Last week: bubble
Peggy's good. She's getting better. She's not asking for things. Perhaps because Duck Phillips is giving her everything she needs, and by "everything she needs" we mean "five-hour lunchtime lovemaking/lingerie-munching sessions in an expensive hotel suite," if you catch our drift about all the sex she's having with an older man named for a waterfowl. (Are we ever going to let Pegs live down the Duck thing? No, no we are not.) Even after the layoff of a couple of under-serviced weeks, Peggy jumped backed into action, enraging Kinsey by improving his Aquanet pitch, then later saving him and impressing Don by having some well-timed inspiration about the Western Union campaign. She's more than earned a high position in her return to the rankings
5. Sally Draper (up) Last week: 6
"Why don't we go to Church?" asked Sally.
"We don't need to go every week," answered Betty.
Sally Draper PatricideWatch: Momentarily conflicted by her impulse to one day butcher her father as he naps away a three-old-fashioned Sunday afternoon on the couch, Sally reached out to Mommy for some religious guidance, hoping a last-ditch reinvestment in their faith might help dispel her upsetting urge to kill. Mommy, however, thinks a token visit to Church for Christmas is plenty, a tragic decision that may drive Sally to fill the spiritual void in her life by taking up with a murderous cult that encourages her patricidal bent. (And gives her a cool nickname, like "Squeaky Sally.")
6. Lane Pryce (up) Last week: unranked
"Churchill rousing, or Hitler rousing?" Actually, we're going to go with "Chamberlain rousing."
7. Miss Farrell (up) Last week: 10
"I don't care about your marriage, or your work, or any of that. As long as I know you're with me." Now this lady really gets how to be a mistress. (Probably because she's destroyed so many marriages in so many towns, she knows exactly what to say to set up maximum homewrecking damage down the road.)
8. Paul Kinsey (up) Last week: unranked
Last week, Harry Crane got to play the "designated boob" role. And he performed admirably. But for our money, no one gilds the boob-lily with as much panache as good old Paul, heaping pomposity, self-regard, and burgeoning alcoholism onto his bumbling.
One side-note: Did Kinsey unbuckle his belt in that late-night-at-the-office scene, or did we imagine that? We feared Peggy was going to walk in on a soused, blubbering Paul trying to jerk his way towards inspiration. Or Achilles, whom we imagine walks in on a wasted Kinsey three nights a week while he's trying to manually jump start his creativity-engine.
9. The Backstory Box (aka The Shoebox of Damocles) (up) Last week: unranked
Deep inside the Desk of Secrets, an enchanted furnishing that can only be unlocked when the Sad Princess finds the Magic Key, is the Backstory Box, which holds all of the explanatory treasures the Liar Prince wants to hide from his imprisoned, congenitally bored, bride. But even though the Sad Princess has spent years looking for the Magic Key, when she finally unlocks the Desk of Secrets and opens the Backstory Box, she won't be ready for what she'll find inside, and she'll need to drink an entire bottle of Emboldening Potion to demand that the Liar Prince explain why there's a piece of paper that says he used to be married to some other princess. Luckily, the Liar Prince was too busy schtupping a Comely Homewrecking Maiden to come back to the castle that night, so all he got was some icy stares at the Royal Banquet while the Sad Princess, looking as gorgeous as ever, stewed about all the terrible things she found inside that accursed shoebox.
(Were there no safety deposit boxes in 1963? Just asking.)
10. Achilles The Janitor (up) Last week: unranked
Good janitor. Great name. Poor memory.
Entering/Exiting: Danny Farrell
Hey, check it out: Another punk kid comes strolling through Don's world, sneers at how square the old man is while getting a ride in his Cadillac, then winds up with all his money. Except this one thinks he's Julius Caesar because he has epilepsy, or something. (Also, he didn't clock Don in the head. But he kind of would have, if Don tried to take him all the way to Bedford?)
Honorable Mention: Mother Sterling
"Enjoy the world as it is, Margaret. They'll change it and never give you a reason. Oh, by the way, Roger. I'm not senile, I know exactly who this tramp is. I'm just f*cking with you both because you shouldn't have married someone your daughter's age, you horny old yutz. 'Does Mona know?' Hahaha, I am effing hilarious!"
Not ranked: Joan Holloway, Pete Campbell, Henry Francis, Bert Cooper, Connie Hilton, Salvatore Romano, Bobby Draper, Lois, Moneypenny, London, honey, Agamemnon the Window-Washer, Doug Thompson.